Look at the Audience? A Randomized Controlled Study of Shifting Attention From Self-Focus to Nonsocial vs. Social External Stimuli During Virtual Reality Exposure to Public Speaking in Social Anxiety.

ABSTRACT: Background: Enhanced self-focused attention plays a central role in the maintenance and treatment of Social Anxiety and is targeted in contemporary cognitive behavioral therapy. Actual developments use Virtual Reality (VR) for behavioral training. However, no VR attention training combining exposure to public speaking with shifting attention from self-focus to external focus has been investigated, and no experimental evidence exists on different kinds of external cues as targets of attention. Therefore, we investigated the effects of an attention training during public speaking in VR and examined differential effects of an external focus on nonsocial vs. social stimuli. Methods: In this randomized controlled study, highly socially anxious participants were instructed to focus

SUBMITTER: Wechsler TF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8712494 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature